Get That Life: How I Became a Political Commentator and Novelist

NBC political commentator and Republican strategist Nicolle Wallace, 44, has changed her career path multiple times. She started out as a broadcast journalist, transitioned into politics — ultimately becoming the White House communications director under former President George W. Bush — and later became a novelist and political commentator. To Wallace, the transitions have been almost seamless, a natural evolution of someone who has always been passionate about journalism and politics. As a Republican who disavowed Donald Trump during the election, she finds herself at another crossroads in her career.

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My parents were always watching 60 Minutes and my grandparents always watched the network news, so I remember always being in a news-watching household. In college and graduate school, I always admired Katie Couric. I think that journalism was the first love and covering politics sort of came as I grew older.

I was not raised in a particularly political household [but] definitely not a Republican household. I was raised in Northern California and I’m one of four kids that went to UC Berkeley, which certainly exposed me to a lot more liberalism than conservatism. I interned at local TV stations for three of my four years in college and almost spent as much time in a newsroom during my college years as I did in my dorm room or in my sorority.

Right out of college, I got a job as a production assistant at KPIX. I worked 2 a.m. to, like, 10 or 11 a.m. and I helped prepare the early, early morning broadcast that went on before the network morning shows came on. I remember wondering how I could get from where I was to what I wanted to do, which was be the journalist out in the van covering the story.

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I decided to go to graduate school for broadcast journalism at [Northwestern University’s] Medill School for Journalism. Part of the graduate school program at Medill is to go to Washington and cover politics. I worked for a station called WDAY Chicago and I filed reports from D.C. to the local ABC affiliate in Chicago. I got to go in and interview senators, and it was just like an "I won the lottery" job.

When I went back to local news, after [I graduated in 1996], I sort of missed the politics, so I made a jump from local news to working [in politics]. Some people call that "going to the dark side." Very high-profile journalists like Dave Carney and Rick Stengel have done that when they went into the Obama administration. But I did it at the very infancy of my career in television.

I did not enter politics a young conservative or a young liberal. I entered politics because I wanted to work with the press in helping politicians get their story out. I worked in the legislature in California for the Assembly of Republicans Caucus, and I worked on a gubernatorial campaign, and then I had an opportunity to work as Gov. Jeb Bush’s press secretary. While working for him, I met his brother’s team and went to work for George W. Bush at the beginning of his first term as special assistant to the president and director of media affairs at the White House.

I worked for the president on Sept. 11, 2001, and during a national emergency, when things are happening so quickly, the challenge isn’t about your job being difficult. I’d say all of my challenges in government and the White House were times when just the circumstances were so difficult. I worked for the president before and during the Iraq War, before and during the war in Afghanistan. I worked for him just during some extraordinarily challenging times for the country.

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The post-9/11 period I think will be studied for a very long time, but communicating in the moment often dealt with trying to reassure the public with information that wasn’t always reassuring. I think with 9/11 the challenge was that people were truly terrified for many, many, many days and weeks and months afterward. For a while after Sept. 11 and after the anthrax deaths — people died from [mailed] anthrax after 9/11 — people were afraid to go to the mailbox because there was white powder being mailed. I was involved in the communications effort to get information from the United States Postal Service to the public about how their mail was being screened and to try to reassure them that they wouldn’t encounter anthrax in their mailbox. I certainly believed in everything George W. Bush did after 9/11 to make sure that we were safe.

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I was there for 6 1/2 years and then worked for the McCain-Palin ticket for less than a year, about six months. I think with the passing of time, I realized that [Palin] was right about more than she was wrong. I think that there would be no Trump without Palin. I think she understood that the Republican Party was really angry and frustrated not just with Washington, but also with people in the political establishment.

The fact that there were gaps in her knowledge is well-documented and well-established. And I was, in the moment, taken aback that she would blame all her advisers. But with the benefit of hindsight, she wasn’t particularly well-served by people who were accustomed to establishment politicians, who were familiar with the policies and familiar with the debates. She was ahead of her time in understanding what the Republican Party’s mood was.

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I respected and admired Sen. McCain my entire career and during the time I worked for him even more so. President Obama was a phenomenon, politically speaking, and it was a tough campaign. I realized I had sort of served my time in politics. I served the president. I revered and I still revere George W. Bush. I realized that for me, I was not animated by being part of sort of conservative policy movement. I was motivated by loyalty and admiration and extreme affection for the Bush family, so when George W. Bush left the office, there wasn’t a job in politics that appealed to me or interested me.

I moved to New York, and I had a baby, and I wrote three novels about a fictional female president and women in politics and the media. I was interested in writing about politics in a more creative way and lightening up. I’d always done a lot of writing in my job, so the transition to writing fiction was a relatively smooth one.

After 2008, I just thought that the treatment of Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton was so startling and stunning. I wanted to play with the idea of the unique indignities that females — not just politicians — are subjected to in the public light. I think that they are as different as any two politicians [can be], but I think that they both were subjected to more analysis of their appearance, more analysis of their likability, more analysis of their capabilities, more analysis of their records as mothers and wives. I only worked for men before I worked for Sarah Palin. I’d never fielded any questions along any of those lines for any men.

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I was looking to try something different [than politics] so I started working in television. I was a contributor on Morning Joe and I spent some time on ABC doing largely what I do now, which is political analysis.

[In 2014,] I was on The View for one season. Getting fired from The View is my most recent career setback. To be hired for The View — which is sort of an entertainment platform — just felt like such a departure, but it was one that I loved. I adore Whoopi [Goldberg]. We’re still very dear friends and then to be fired from the show a year later was just unexpected.

In hindsight, it makes perfect sense. They weren’t under any obligation to keep me around and they didn’t, but it was a perfect segue back into a more full-time role in covering and analyzing the 2016 presidential campaign. And I never could’ve imagined in the disappointment or the embarrassment of that moment, that I would land [as a political analyst] on a place like NBC and MSNBC, that would literally have me on television every single solitary day talking about the most extraordinary and compelling presidential campaign in modern political history.

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I never stop wondering, Oh my god, is this the last time I’m going to be on a TV program? or, Oh my god, is this the last book I’m every going to have an opportunity to write? or, Is the last speech I’m ever going to be asked to give? I feel like the high points are like winning lottery tickets. I always think it’s the last one. I always savor everything about it. I just feel like I had extraordinary opportunities, and I still feel that way, and I feel really fortunate for every one. I would never sort of divide myself up into successes and challenges. I think that it’s just all been a surprise.

Nicolle Wallace with Whoopi Goldberg.

Getty

I’m not sure [if I still identify as Republican]. I’m mulling that over. The Republican Party I was a part of for 20 years died in the room the night of Donald Trump’s speech [at the RNC]. The party that was for free trade, robust foreign policy, and that was a trusted ally to friends and neighbors around the world — the party that I worked for for two decades was not the party on the ticket this year.

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It’s not in a particularly healthy place. I think the party has sort of latched itself onto anger and fear and resentment and grievances. On the Saturday before the election, I called a friend on the Clinton campaign and he said, "You nervous about TV tomorrow?" and I said, "No! I’m nervous that you’re going to lose." And I did not predict it. I did not think she was going to lose, but it was really, really, really apparent by the time the very first exit polls came out Tuesday that by the time we went on the air, Florida was not coming in in a manner that looked like she was going to win. I remember just blurting out loud that I was wrong.

I felt and still feel very analytical about what is really just the biggest political shocker of my career, but I think the teachable moment is in understanding how out of touch people were with his appeal and his supporters. Both my parents have been Trump supporters for over a year and a lot of people that I know in New York supported him. His support and his advantages were sort of hiding in plain sight, so even on that night, it became very apparent that he was going to win and why he had done so.

I sort of swerve between media and politics, and then wanting to write about media and politics. Sometimes you need to spend some time away from writing to get new material, and I feel like I have plenty of new material after covering this campaign. I’d be very interested in trying to find time to write a novel or another series of novels.

I don’t spend a lot of time reflecting upon the finish line or what the top of the mountain would look like. I have no idea. But I think that most people I know are just grateful for the opportunities they have and sort of charging ahead and doing their best.

Get That Life is a weekly series that reveals how successful, talented, creative women got to where they are now. Check back each Monday for the latest interview.